I've never owned a car. I've ridden public transit, gotten a ride, or used zipcar my entire life. I actually think owning a car would be a huge hassle - shovel it out in the winter, find parking, pay for insurance, maintenance, blah blah blah... probably because I grew up like that.

I guess I'm fortunate to live in an area (Boston) where there's pretty good transportation options. I walk 10 min then take the subway 10 min and I'm at work. I can walk to the grocery store, ride my bike to most other places, and take a bus or train to get to places that are further away. I get a zipcar if I need to go somewhere without transit access (or pick up something large from the store). Or taxi if I'm lazy or if the subway's closed for the night. I split gas with people who give me rides. Seems to work out.

If I lived somewhere else I'd maybe want to get a car though.

I remember in my transportation economics class in college, my professor saying that in most parts of the world, transit is an 'inferior good' - consumption goes down as income goes up. There are a few areas where this is not the case.

Believe Me, I would take public transportation if they stopped at all the places I wanted to go when I wanted, but it just takes too long. I love the freedom and "being in control of My destiny" that driving has to offer. I'm willing to spend a few extra bucks on gas if it means having more control over where I'm going. Or is it public transportation that's more expensive? I dunno, and I don't feel like researching it to find out.

The public transit in my area is terrible. The people running it don't understand that the concept of taking public transit is to go somewhere in a reasonable amount of time. If it were more accessible to my home, I would take it more often. But it is three miles away, and it's one bus route, which I don't often needs. Plus that bus runs only once every hour and a half or so, which is annoying.
I don't drive so I walk everywhere, fairly long distances at times.
Oh well. I guess that I'm in good shape.
Mass transit, on the other hand, isn't.
I want light rail, bullet trains, and subways.
But I would be just as happy with better bike/walking paths that connected to one another.

I'm a little teapot, short and stout. Here is my handle and here is my spout. Every time I steam up, I give a shout. Just tip me over and pour me out.

Public transit isn't available in my area. There are like 2 taxi services, but you have to call and make an appointment and it is really expensive. There's one bus line, but it's also appointment only as far as I know. It just isn't cost effective or convenient. A bike or car is really the only way to go here.

in finland people who use public transportation even after they turn 30 arent seen as weirdos or failures in life. many people with well paying jobs prefer public transportation even if they would own a car. thats not just because it might not be all that easy to find parking lot from some places, but people also think about the environment here and we got pretty well working public transportation system..

im not interested of getting a car and when i had a job, i could have easily afforded to get a driving license, buy a car and use it instead of public transportation, but i wanted to use public transportation and bike instead

"Where wisdom reigns, there is no conflict between thinking and feeling."
— C.G. Jung

It's my usual mode of transportation. I haven't yet bothered to get a driver's license, even though public transportation sucks where I am. Not many people use it, which means it doesn't get much funding, which means it continues to suck, which means not many people will use it, etc.

Public transportation barely exists around here--hell, they've stopped operating school buses in large portions of the area. There's hardly even any infrastructure for walking or biking.

In areas with at least fairly adequate public transportation, owning a car is probably just seen as a status symbol. I'd also wager that if the public transportation is run-down and dirty, then the people who use it are.. well, associated with a run-down and dirty form of transportation.

When living in Minnesota for a number of years and working downtown for 6+ of those years, I used the bus system to get to and from work - exclusively. It was a money-saver, due to the cost of parking downtown, and it was also a time-saver when I was living in an urban setting and commuting downtown, and then later on living pretty far out in the suburbs and commuting downtown. I think the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro transit system was quite good, and they also catered to the workforce by creating routes that were direct - direct from hubs in the suburbs straight downtown. And since buses there could ride the sides of the interstate, they could basically bypass all of the congestion. Thus a timesaver.

Now that I'm in Colorado, I haven't done public transport at all. That's basically because I work out in the burbs, so I don't have to pay for parking, AND via car it only takes me 15 minutes in the mornings to get from my apartment downtown to my office, and in the afternoons it takes anywhere from 30-45 minutes in heavy traffic (which in the grand scheme of 'heavy traffic' in U.S. cities, is nothing) -- well, assuming it's not one of the Snow Days in winter-time. Then you're looking at 1.5 hours easily - but buses wouldn't be any better, because they don't/can't ride the side of the road like they could in MN.

So in my current situation, public transit is not gonna be a money-saver, really (although once gas prices hit a certain threshold it might become so), but the big factor is the Time factor -it would add significantly greater amounts of time going to and from work if I used public transit (walking to bus/light rail,waiting for bus/light rail, etc etc) -- simply because my current commute is a piece of cake compared to the traffic/commute factors I was dealing with in Minnesota.

Aside from work, since I now live on the edge of downtown I can/do walk everywhere downtown, and there's a great free 'mall ride' shuttle that goes the length of downtown that I'll hop on if I don't feel like walking 10 blocks, or whatever.

"...On and on and on and on he strode, far out over the sands, singing wildly to the sea, crying to greet the advent of the life that had cried to him." - James Joyce